Novel Spaces

Not many writers can write full time…one has to eat after all. As a result many of us find ourselves juggling a number of hats and very often the writing is the first activity to get put on the back burner when life gets busy. With a deadline cracking its whip at my back, I have been forced to stick to a word goal even while working at marketing my existing work. Continue reading “Writing Goals-Do You Set Them? Keep Them?”

After one of my books is approved for publication I become almost maniacal checking Amazon to see when they make it available for sale. Nothing was different with my latest YA novel, Barberry Hill. I searched for the title and, what you see above is what I got: ‘Showing results for Burberry Hill.’ Wait what? No!

If you know me, you know I love to travel. I tell people I will never be rich because every time I have two pennies to spare I am on a plane. My most recent trip was to Vietnam with a stop in Dubai on the way back. Vietnam was the first Asian country I had ever visited and it lived up to every expectation. Continue reading “My Travel Bug”

This may sound cynical but I believe that most of us are capable of murder. The question is how far would the average Joe–not a psychopath or otherwise mentally ill person–have to be pushed in order to actually go through with murdering someone? Continue reading “Murder Anyone?”

We have been off to an interesting start and without introducing any partisan politics at all I feel obliged to ask a question. In a world where we have incessant access to news (real and ‘alternate’), do authors still have a job?

I’m old enough to remember when you had to go find an actual book, preferably the Encyclopedia Britannica, if you wanted to research a topic, but I would be lying if I said that I’m nostalgic of that particular part of my past.Continue reading “Google–my new best friend”

“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern…
This line, the first in Charlotte’s Webb is one of the most famous children’s book first lines.

We immediately are interested in what is coming next, we connect with Fern’s concern, and get a sense of the urgency of Wilbur’s plight. You can probably assign varying intonations to it. Fern might be asking the question innocently, curiously, or with full knowledge of what it means when papa picks up that ax and goes outside. Where IS “…papa going with that ax” indeed.Continue Reading

I recently wrote a short story and decided to submit it to a publication. I hired our own novelspaces co-ordinator, Liane, who did a brilliant line edit on it and I was about to submit it when I re-read the submission requirements.

Newton’s laws of motion are the sort of laws that must have seemed like common sense once he came up them. The first one states that “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.” So if you are moving you stay moving unless something stops you and if you are stationary you stay that way unless something moves you. Continue reading “Be the Enabler”